It was a scientific question that Mirjam Tuk and her colleagues were bursting to answer. While psychology had revealed how human behaviour can be changed by all kinds of feelings, from sexual desire to hunger, an urgent issue had yet to be addressed. What happens to decision-making, the Dutch researchers wondered, when you really, really need the loo?

The team’s conclusion — that people make better decisions about some things, and worse decisions about others — was rewarded last night with an Ig Nobel prize, in the annual awards that recognise research that “cannot or should not be reproduced”.